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That sucks Kevin and yes, it would be very frustrating. I wish I had some great and helpful advice but being pretty new to the hobby, I'm afraid I don't. I will say that in the short time I have been a part of this forum I have admired your beautiful tanks and gained a lot of knowledge from all of your posts. Bottom line is you are a great fishkeeper and I'm sure things will right themselves soon. Just gotta have.. ugh.. Patience.

Kevin just to let you know a good friend of mine has a 55 galon tank at the startof june he added six female gbrs to it. He did a major clen of this tank yesterday he only has two females left. No bodys no signs of them also at the same time he has had 15 neons vanish into thin water. Same thing on bodys. He has been keeping fish thirty plus years. Pramiters for water spot on. I would blame aleins here to. Sharing this because even with lots of exp. Weird stuff happens. Like I said before you do great. We just get frustreated by odd stuff.

Thanks DM, that means quite a bit, and Chris, that's actually quite helpful to hear. lol I'm sorry your friend lost all of those fish, but at least there are much more experienced fish keepers out there who experience the same types of hiccups. I guess that gives me some hope.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.
Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit. -Vince Lombardi
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” ― John WoodenSandy Hook Elementary......Lest We Forget
See my profile for my tanks and what fish I keep

Kevin, so sorry about the loss loss your Raph and the oto. It has just been one thing after another for you lately.
Can you tell me what the time frame was between you starting to dose with co2 and the ich? It's so hard to pinpoint when an issue may have started or like you said it could be a combination of things.
When I was growing up and my dad had tanks he didn't test for anything. Of course at that time municipal water wasn't treated like it is now, he never had live plants and if a fish died, he felt bad but just went and got more..no such thing as qt back then either and water changes were done at no regular interval and topped off when the waterline dropped.

I think keeping a healthy planted tank with healthy fish is very challenging as you have to focus on both instead of just one and it's a balancing act and something personally I would never put myself through so I live vicariously through those with lovely highly planted tanks.

In my opinion after reading the link, elevated nitrates although not the devil ;) can present issues with fish health in the long term, you're just not going to see the problem immediately as with ammonia or nitrites. What the industry needs is an accurate affordable way of testing. Even with discus I admit to not testing often. I got my starting point by testing, their food is measured and water changes done to keep that approximate level...of course I don't dose or have plants :D. I honestly couldn't tell you my nitrate levels in the 45, haven't tested for ages

Once again, I'm sorry about your cat and otto.
I just read the link. It's very interesting - and of course, makes the foundation on which I've built my fishkeeping standards pretty wobbly.
I don't know if you remember that when I called SEAchems about a product to help reduce nitrates and I told them they got as hi as 40ppm in my 90 - they laughed and told me I had no problem and things must be mighty fine in my tank if I could keep trates that low. My LFS owner - who admittedly is old school - runs all of his show tanks on UGF's completely. I asked him once how hi his trates were. He said last time he checked around 80ppmn. Didn't see it as a problem. Nitrates have run that high in his tanks for over 30 years and he has great longevity with his fish. He also doesn't have planted tanks ...
So, I'm taking away from the conversation in that link that we can't depend on the nitrate tests, wouldn't matter what they read anyway as long as the fish are healthy, and quite possibly, all the fert dosing could be the culprit in any unexplained deaths instead of high nitrates.

Not that I'm going to take this info and run with it and change my entire way of maintaining the tank, but it certainly does give one reason to ponder the entire nitrate issue.
It does make me wonder because I lost that blood parrot shortly after I started dosing with Metricide BUT I'd also made a lot of other changes in that tank and hubby caught the clogged PFS and once he cleaned it, everything was right with the tank again.

So my question to you, Kevin, is - are you reconsidering any of the ferts you are using? Do you think Metricide might cause the same issues that the article suggests that C02 causes?